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Comments Georgia (default) Verdana Times New Roman Arial Font | Size: The last book was purchased at Stacey's bookstore Tuesday. It was 70 percent off and it may have had a teardrop or two on it.
Now it is four floors of nearly empty shelves, empty racks, empty tables and empty everything else. The shelves are for sale, along with all the rest, including the sign on the rest room door that says you mustn't bring unbought books into the rest room with you. Things printed on paper - things like books and note cards and newspapers - seem more endangered than condors and arctic ice. "Just because it's always been here, you think it's always going to be here. There was no shortage of broken hearts, long faces and slumped shoulders inside the giant emporium. Like most bookstores, Stacey's has served as a refuge from whatever's outside. For five decades it has welcomed browsers no less warmly than buyers to its sanctuary at Second and Market. Stacey's was known for its comfortable stuffed chairs and for clerks who never said you couldn't sit in them. Andrew McKinley, who runs the Adobe used-book shop in the Mission District, dropped by to pick up some of Stacey's cast-off bookcases for his own store. That's something of a gamble, he acknowledged, as bookstores are all in pretty much the same fix. "But it may be that all small independent bookstores are doomed. Carol Lauten, a photographer from Sausalito, was buying up wire bookstands at five for a buck. She planned to use them to display her photographs, and she was feeling a little guilty about the good deal she was getting. "I'd rather pay full price for these things and have Stacey's stay in business," she said. Behind the customer service desk stood clerk Lauretta Cuadra. That was the best customer service she could manage, under the circumstances. For years, Cuadra has been in charge of the book layaway service. On the last day of business there is nothing to lay away. "People won't know what they've lost until after it's gone," she said. "I'd like it for bookstores to remain viable, but I don't know how to do it. And there was no stopping Cuadra from buying a filing cabinet and a lamp from among the fixtures. Just about the only things not for sale were a box of tissues that more than one mopey customer had been dipping into, along with a wall clock that was ticking off the seconds until 6 pm closing time. Veteran clerk Ed Mycue said he didn't know what he was going to do after the store shut down. Bookstore clerks don't know how to do much besides be bookstore clerks, he said with a sigh, and that's an occupation the world has decided it can largely do without. He wrote a book of poems about such situations, and he was passing out the book to last-day customers, free, which was an even better deal than 70 percent off. "What we are we are/What we have been is us/What is left is nothing." That's the business model for today's bookstore, Mycue said. "My nephews tell me they get all the information they need off the Internet," he said, shrugging.
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Hearst Newspapers Be the first to share your thoughts on this story. Tears and deals as Stacey's closes in SF Articles The last book was purchased at Stacey's bookstore Tuesday. It was 70 percent off and it may have had a teardrop or two on it. Stacey's, the largest independent bookseller left in San Francisco, is no more.
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